INFERNO XVI
INFERNO XVI
I had arrived where we could hear the distant roar →
of water falling to the lower circle,
3 like the rumbling hum of bees around a hive,
when three shades at a run
broke from a passing crowd
6 under that rain of bitter torment.
Together they came toward us, each one calling:
‘Stop, you, who by your garb appear to be
9 a man from our degenerate city.’
Oh, what sores I noticed on their limbs,
both old and new ones, branded by the flames!
12 It pains me still, when I remember them.
My teacher was attentive to their cries,
then turned his face to me and said:
15 ‘Now wait: to these one must show courtesy. →
‘And were it not for the fire that the nature
of this place draws down, I would say
18 that haste suits you far more than it does them.’
When we stopped, they took up again →
their old refrain but, once they reached us,
21 all three had joined into a single wheel.
As combatants, oiled and naked, are wont to do,
watching for their hold and their advantage,
24 before the exchange of thrusts and blows,
wheeling, each fixed his eyes on me,
so that their feet moved forward
27 while their necks were straining back.
One began: ‘If the squalor of this shifting sand →
and our blackened, hairless faces
30 put us and our petitions in contempt,
‘let our fame prevail on you
to tell us who you are, who fearless
33 move on living feet through Hell.
‘He in whose steps you see me tread,
though he go naked, peeled hairless by the fire,
36 was of a higher rank than you imagine.
‘He was grandson of the good Gualdrada.
Guido Guerra was his name. In his life
39 he did much with good sense, much with the sword.
‘This other, squinching sand behind me,
is Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, whose voice
42 deserved a better welcome in the world.
‘And I, who am put to torment with them,
was Jacopo Rusticucci. It was my bestial wife,
45 more than all else, who brought me to this pass.’
Had I been sheltered from the fire →
I would have thrown myself among them,
48 and I believe my teacher would have let me.
But because I would have burned and baked,
fright overcame the good intentions
51 that made me hunger to embrace them.
Then I began: ‘Not contempt, but sadness,
fixed your condition in my heart so deep—
54 it will be long before it leaves me—
‘the moment that my master’s words
made me consider that such worthy men
57 as you were coming near.
‘I am of your city. How many times →
I’ve heard your deeds, your honored names resound!
60 And I, too, spoke your names with affection.
‘I leave bitterness behind for the sweet fruits
promised by my truthful leader.
63 But first I must go down into the very core.’
‘That your spirit long may guide →
your limbs,’ he now added,
66 ‘and your renown shine after you,
‘tell us if valor and courtesy still live
there in our city, as once they used to do,
69 or have they utterly forsaken her?
‘Guglielmo Borsiere, grieving with us here
so short a time, goes yonder with our company
72 and makes us worry with his words.’
‘The new crowd with their sudden profits →
have begot in you, Florence, such excess
75 and arrogance that you already weep.’
This, my face uplifted, I cried out. And the three, →
taking it for answer, looked at one another
78 as men do when they face the truth.
‘If at other times it costs so little
for you to give clear answers,’ they replied in turn,
81 ‘happy are you to speak so freely.
‘Therefore, so may you escape from these dark regions →
to see again the beauty of the stars,
84 when you shall rejoice in saying “I was there,”
‘see that you speak of us to others.’
Then they broke their circle and as they fled
87 their nimble legs seemed wings.
‘Amen’ could not have been said as quickly →
as they vanished. And then my master
90 thought it time to leave.
I followed him, and we had not gone far →
before the roar of water was so close
93 we hardly could have heard each other speak.
As the river that is the first to hold →
its course from Monte Viso eastward
96 on the left slope of the Apennines,
and up there is called the Acquacheta,
before it pours into its lower bed
99 and, having lost that name at Forlì,
reverberates above San Benedetto
dell’Alpe, falling in one cataract
102 where there might well have been a thousand,
so, down from a precipitous bank, the flood
of that dark water coming down resounded
105 in our ears and almost stunned us.
I had a cord around my waist →
with which I once had meant to take
108 the leopard with the painted pelt.
After I had undone it, →
as my leader had commanded,
111 I gave it to him coiled and knotted.
Then, swinging round on his right side,
he flung it out some distance from the edge,
114 down into the depth of that abyss.
‘Surely,’ I said to myself, ‘something new →
and strange will answer this strange signal
117 the master follows with his eye.’
Ah, how cautious we should be with those
who do not see our actions only,
120 but with their wisdom peer into our thoughts!
He said to me: ‘Soon what I expect
and your mind only dreams of will appear.
123 Soon it shall be right before your eyes.’
To a truth that bears the face of falsehood →
a man should seal his lips if he is able,
126 for it might shame him, through no fault of his,
but here I can’t be silent. And by the strains
of this Comedy—so may they soon succeed
129 in finding favor—I swear to you, reader,
that I saw come swimming up
through that dense and murky air a shape
132 to cause amazement in the stoutest heart,
a shape most like a man’s who, having plunged →
to loose the anchor caught fast in a reef
or something other hidden in the sea, now rises,
136 reaching upward and drawing in his feet.